During the presidential transition, Brookings scholars wrote a series of policy recommendations in 12 memos to incoming President Barack Obama. In January 2010, one year into the new presidency, our experts rated the progress of the new administration on those same issues in The Status Report, a series of daily commentary and video.

Each of the items below provides an assessment of President Obama?s performance in light of recommendations made during the Presidential Transition.

In the wake of Tuesday?s game-changing Republican victory in Massachusetts I?ve been inundated with expressions of bafflement from perplexed Europeans. How is it, they ask incredulously, that one year after Barack Obama came into office on a wave of popular euphoria, he has somehow come to attract the rage of the very Americans he?s been trying to help. So for my European readers, I?ll make an attempt to explain what?s going on ? particularly in light of that fact that I?ve seen some pretty inept analysis from the British media over the past two days.

Tobias P. Fella: The Obama Administration returns to the logic of liberal hegemony. Nowadays, global challenges require an approach based on multilateral cooperation, smart power and the acknowledgment of security interdependence. The new American Grand Strategy precisely takes all of them into account.